track

New Technique for Tracking Gene Regulators

Finding out where gene-regulator proteinsbind to DNA and identifying the genes they regulate just got a stepeasier thanks to a new technique developed by scientists at the U.S.Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. The techniquecould greatly speed the process of unraveling the role these proteinsplay in turning on and off the genes that establish the very identityof cells ?b...

Protein offers way to stop microscopic parasites in their tracks

Scientists may have found a way to throw a wrench in the transmissions of several speed demons of the parasite world. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have identified a protein that could help them develop drugs to stop or slow cell invasion by malaria and other parasites known as apicomplexans. Results of the study will appear in...

Stopping smallpox in its tracks: A new anti-viral approach

Natural or deliberate exposure to smallpox poses a great health threat, especially since routine smallpox vaccinations have been discontinued and no clinically approved treatment currently exists. In the February 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Ellis Reinherz and colleagues from Harvard Medical School propose a new antiviral therapy ?a low molecular weight inhibitor of signaling...

Findings have implications for tracking disease, drugs at the molecular level

Researchers in the laboratory of Boston College Chemistry Professor John T. Fourkas have demonstrated that gold particles comparable in size to a molecule can be induced to emit light so strongly that it is readily possible to observe a single nanoparticle. Fourkas, in collaboration with postdoctoral researcher Richard Farrer and BC undergraduates Francis Butterfield and Vincent Chen, coaxed the...

Radio-tracking associated with 'dramatic shift' in water vole sex ratio

Wildlife researchers are being warned that radio-tracking could be affecting the animals they are studying. According to new research published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, fitting radio-collars to water voles was associated with a "dramatic shift" in the sex ratio of the animals' offspring, casting doubt on the assumption that radio-tracking does not fund...

Venom doc tracks down snake bioweapons

Bryan Grieg Fry, Ph.D., a scientist from the University of Melbourne, Australia, has conducted the first comprehensive analysis of the origin and evolution of one of nature's most sophisticated bioweapons: snake venom. His results are reported in the March issue of the journal Genome Research. Venomous snakes, all of which belong to the superfamily Colubroidea, evolved glands for the stora...

Novel live reporting system to track cells

New findings show an iron storage molecule in the cell can serve as an advanced tool for mapping gene expression. Future gene therapy may use a technique in which non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used to track this molecule. The results of this research, conducted by Prof. Michal Neeman of the Weizmann Institute's Biological Regulation Department, were published in the research jo...

Study shows humans have ability to track odors, much like bloodhounds

Though humans may never match the tracking ability of dogs, we apparently have the ability to sniff out and locate odors, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. Student volunteers presented with odors to one nostril or the other could reliably discern where the odor was coming from, and functional magnetic resonance images of their brains showed...

Scientists track stealth DNA elements in primate evolution

Louisiana State University scientists in the Department of Biological Sciences have unraveled the details of a 25-million-year-old evolutionary process in the human genome. Specific DNA sequences that appear to have persisted in a latent state for long periods of time may not be simply lying dormant. Instead, the researchers say that these elements have played a crucial role in human evolution by...

Researchers track down cause of a disfiguring bone disorder

Scientists have tracked down the biological trigger that gives rise to Van Buchem disease, a hereditary, disfiguring bone disorder that can cause blindness and deafness. The findings provide insight into long-range gene regulation and could lead to new treatments for osteoporosis and other crippling bone disorders. A research team from Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley national labo...

How satellite tracking revealed the migratory mysteries of endangered Atlantic loggerhead turtles

Their journeys are among the longest in the animal kingdom and they have largely remained a mystery until now. An international team of scientists led by the University of Exeter have uncovered the migratory secrets of endangered loggerhead turtles in West Africa and the results could have huge implications for strategies to protect them. In a paper in the journal Current Biology, Dr Brend...

MERIS monitoring tracks planetary photosynthesis levels

Daily multispectral observations from Envisat's MERIS sensor are being combined with a sophisticated processing algorithm and powerful Grid computing to reveal global photosynthesis activity on land. This permits researchers to trace the state of health of terrestrial plant cover, identifying areas under stress and assessing damage from drought or fires. An algorithm developed by the Europ...

UQ researcher tracking key to healing the brain

Stem cells have long been described as the holy grail of bioscientists. These amazing cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body and have to potential to revolutionise medical science. Serving as a sort of repair system for the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish cells lost due to everyday wear and tear, or following injury...

Fish and chips: A fast track to understanding blood development

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have identified for the first time a group of genes that impact the development and function of blood stem cells, a discovery that brings researchers a step closer to harnessing the power of stem cells for disease treatments. Every day, blood stem cells divide and differentiate to generate approximately 200 billion new blood cells in the bone marr...

U. of Colorado researcher identifies tracks of swimming dinosaur in Wyoming

With their long stalks and feathery arms, marine animals known as sea lilies look a lot like their garden-variety namesakes. Perhaps because of that resemblance, scientists had always assumed that sea lilies stayed rooted instead of moving around lik...

Magnetic probe successfully tracks implanted cells in cancer patients

By using MRI to detect magnetic probes of tiny iron oxide particles, an international research team for the first time has successfully tracked immune-stimulating cells implanted into cancer patients for treatment purposes. "In four of the eight patients, MRI revealed that the implanted cells weren't where they needed to be to be effective for treatment," says Jeff Bulte, Ph.D., an associ...

'Perception' gene tracked humanity's evolution, scientists say

A gene thought to influence perception and susceptibility to drug dependence is expressed more readily in human beings than in other primates, and this difference coincides with the evolution of our species, say scientists at Indiana University Bloomington and three other academic institutions. Their report appears in the December issue of Public Library of Science Biology. The gene encod...

A resetting signal keeps circadian rhythm on track in Drosophila fruit flies

A Brandeis University study published this week in Nature shows for the first time that a molecular signal maintains coherence among brain clock cells that regulate daily activity of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). The two key groups of neurons control morning and evening activity and are maintained in synch even when the flies are plunged into darkness for extended periods of time. <...

USC researchers track down the stem cells that create feathers

The stem cells that produce bird feathers have been visualized and analyzed for the first time, signifying the initial step in a scientific journey that may ultimately shed light on human organ regeneration. The research, published in the December 15 issue of the journal Nature, was performed by a group of prominent stem-cell researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the University o...

Tracking the memory trace

Memory formation follows a dynamic pattern, allowing for retrieval from different areas of the brain, depending on when an organism needs to remember, said a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine. That is what Dr. Ron L. Davis, professor of molecular and cellular biology at BCM, theorizes, based on his most recent report on the topic that finds a memory trace in Drosophila or fruit flie...

Concern over fast tracking of new drugs

Concerns over the fast tracking of new drugs for commercial licensing are raised by a senior doctor in this week's BMJ. Natalizumab was licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2004...

Formation of cellulose fibers tracked for the first time

Cellulose--a fibrous molecule found in all plants--is the most abundant biological material on Earth. It is also a favored target of renewable, plant-based biofuels research. Despite overwhelming interest, scientists know relatively little about how plant cells synthesize individual cellulose fibers. However, recent work from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology and Stanf...

Genome changes tracked during multiple myeloma initiation, progression and treatment

Scientists have made significant progress toward elucidating key genetic events associated with the development and progression of multiple myeloma (MM), an incurable malignancy that is the second most common cancer of the blood. The results, published in the April issue of Cancer Cell, provide new genetic and biological insights that open innovative directions for the discovery of effective ther...

Research tracks whales by listening to sounds

Researchers have developed a new tool to help them study endangered whales ?autonomous hydrophones that can be deployed in the ocean to record the unique clicks, pulses and calls of different whale species. "There has been only...

New tool tracks brain development in babies

Researchers have used a new technique to monitor brain development in infants and detect disturbances in white matter, according to a study in the July issue of Radiology. Carola van Pul, Ph.D., and colleagues from Máxima Medical Center in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, studied seven normal infants and 10 infants with perinatal hypoxic ischemia, a type of brain injury caused by a period of ox...

On the track of tiny larvae, a new model elucidates connections in marine ecology

A computer model newly developed by researchers combines ocean current simulations and genetic forecasting to help scientists predict animal dispersion patterns and details of the ecology of coral reefs across the Caribbean Sea. The work is reported by Heather M. Galindo and Stephen R. Palumbi of Stanford University, and Donald B. Olson of the University of Miami, and appears in the August 22nd i...

Researchers identify human DNA on the fast track

Since completing the sequencing of the chimpanzee genome last year, geneticists have spent many hours comparing human DNA sequences to those of our closest evolutionary relative, looking for the differences that distinguish the two species. Now a team of researchers has found the human DNA sequence with the most dramatically increased rate of change. The function of this region of DNA is s...

Precision biochemistry tracks DNA damage in fish

Like coal-mine canaries, fish DNA can serve as a measure of the biological impact of water and sediment pollution--or pollution clean-up. That's one of the conclusions of a new study* by researchers from the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Research ov...

Ghost protein leaves fresh tracks in the cell

Spectrin and ankyrin are two essential proteins acting like bricks and mortar to shape and fortify cell membranes. But distinguishing which protein is the brick and which is the mortar has turned out to be difficult. New evidence suggests that spectrin can do both jobs at once. Ron Dubreuil, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reports the fi...

Cell death following blood 'reflow' injury tracked to natural toxin

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered what they believe is the "smoking gun" responsible for most tissue and organ damage after a period of blood oxygen loss followed by a sudden restoration of blood oxygen flow. Working with mice, the Hopkins team found that the sudden oxygen bath triggered by restored blood flow causes cells to make a chemical so toxic it kills the cells. The wo...

Nerve cell software keeps track of brain change

Brain research will get a boost tomorrow (14 October) as CSIRO launches in the United States its HCA-Vision nerve cell analysis software at Neuroscience 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia, the world's largest conference for brain researchers....

New way of tracking muscle damage from radiation

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could become a valuable tool for predicting the risk of muscle injury during and following radiation therapy, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The researchers report that MRI can spot the immediate injury done by radiation therapy to the muscles of children undergoing radiation treatment for certain types of soft-tissue...

New study aims to stop sepsis in its tracks

If you've had a heart attack or stroke, paramedics, doctors, and nurses follow standardized protocols for what to do right away, and their efforts improve your odds for a full recovery. That's not the case if you have a body-wide infection known as sepsis, which can be fatal within a few hours and is often not diagnosed until it is too late. Now, a new, multicenter research consortium, ca...

New imaging technique tracks traffic patterns of white blood cells

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have just developed an advanced imaging technique to capture the movement of the microdomains of leukocytes or white blood cells. Microdomains are restricted areas on the surface of the cells in which receptors and signaling molecules accumulate during cell activation. Using digital multi-channel videomicroscopy, researchers were able to view white bl...

Nanoparticles can track cells deep within living organisms

To the delight of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, living cells gobbled up fluorine-laced nanoparticles without needing any coaxing. Then, because of the unusual meal, the cells were easily located with MRI scanning after being injected into mice. Developed in the laboratories of Samuel A. Wickline, M.D., and Gregory Lanza, M.D., Ph.D., the nanoparticl...

Scientists to track impact of Asian dust and pollution on clouds, weather, climate change

Mice whose brain cells respond to a flash of light are providing insight into the complexities of the sense of smell and may ultimately yield a better understanding of how the human brain works. Investigators at Duke University Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have engineered a strain of mice whose olfactory brain cells "fire" when exposed to light. This was accomplis...

Infection detectives use disease 'fingerprints' to track common infections in children

Infectious disease specialists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found a new method for identifying suspect viruses and bacteria that cause some of the most common acute infections in children. Traditionally, researchers have looked for clues to an infection by tracking down the virus or bacteria causing it. But that doesn’t always work because the bacteria or virus may not be prese...

Tracking sperm whales and jumbo squid

The sperm whale and its large prey, the jumbo squid, are among the deepest divers in the ocean, routinely reaching depths of 3,000 feet or more. Now, in a new study, a team of marine scientists reports the successful tagging of sperm whales and jumbo squid swimming together off Mexico’s Pacific coast—the first time that electronic tracking devices have been applied simultaneously to deep-diving p...

How to look at dinosaur tracks

A new study appearing in the May issue of The Journal of Geology provides fascinating insight into the factors geologists must account for when examining dinosaur tracks. The authors studied a range of larger tracks from the family of dinosaurs that includes the T. Rex and the tridactyl, and provide a guide for interpreting the effects of many different types of erosion on these invaluable impres...

Researchers track how spores break out of dormant state

When starved of nutrients Bacillus (rod-shaped bacteria) cells initiate a series of genetic, biochemical and structural events that resul...